We All Fall Down
by Prismatic Archer
Summary: Once upon a time, Bill Cipher was a human with hopes and dreams. And his story didn't end with happily ever after. Also on Quotev.
1. Chapter 1

_Bang, bang, bang! _Pepper knocked hard on the wooden maroon door. A man had just finished moving in yesterday. She hadn't gotten a good look at him because she didn't want to spy, but she knew it was a young man with a lot of smaller boxes and no furniture as far as she could tell. Butterflies flew around in her stomach as she waited for him to answer. In her mind, she yelled at them to sit still.

After a few intense seconds of waiting, the entrance finally opened. Pepper didn't know what she had expected, but the man that stood in front of her was _not _it. He had an unkempt mess of yellow hair on his head, and wore an unevenly buttoned yellow flannel with black pants and black socks. One thing a little out of place about him was the large black top hat set on his head. He had a bandage covering one eye, a cast on one of his hands, and several cuts, scrapes, and bruises over his skin. They all looked fairly fresh.

Pepper paused for a second and blinked before saying anything. "Hi, I'm Pepper, welcome to the neighborhood!" She finally said, with fake enthusiasm. The man leaned against the door post and crossed his legs.

"The name's Bill Cipher," he said, trying to sound cool. Pepper could tell he was pretty young to be living alone in a mid-sized house.

"You look a little young to be living on your own," Pepper voiced her thoughts. Bill raised an eyebrow.

"So do you. What are you...seventeen?" He said, squinting in fake observation of her.

"I'm twenty-two," Pepper laughed. Bill's mouth fell open in shock and he slipped on his socks, desperately trying to catch himself. This only made Pepper laugh harder at him.

"Hey," Bill said. "Not funny. I could have reopened one of my cuts."

Pepper stopped laughing. "I'm sorry. You're right."

"Eh, it's fine," Bill assured her. Pepper still felt bad about it, though.

"I don't mean to pry," Pepper began, "but what happened to you, anyway?"

"Long story," Bill said. "Really, _really _long story. It'd take the rest of the day to tell. And I don't have time for that."

"Hmm. Well it was nice meeting you," Pepper said. She waved goodbye to him and left.

Pepper didn't see him for a whole two days after that. It was only after she pulled into her driveway after a day of work on Tuesday afternoon that she saw him again. Well, before she saw him, she heard him.

"PEPPER! IS THAT YOU?" He exclaimed. The sound was coming from his backyard. Pepper rushed to the fence separating their yards.

"Yeah, it's me," she said. "What's wrong, Bill?"

"I seem to have fallen into a sticky situation," he said. "You have a car, right?"

"Yeah..."

"Well I need you to drive me to the emergency room."

Suddenly Pepper became very worried. She rushed out of her backyard and into Bill's, shocked to see him lying on the grass with his leg bent at a weird angle and several of his cuts and scrapes bleeding. The bandage around his eye had also come loose and had started to leak fresh blood. Pepper dropped her keys, and quickly picked them back up.

"What happened!?" Pepper exclaimed, rushing to his side.

"I may have fallen off the roof," Bill shrugged, as if it was an everyday occurrence. He didn't seem to be in any pain, either, despite all the bleeding, and his leg. Pepper noticed his hands were behind his back.

"Here," Pepper said. She grabbed his arm and put it around her shoulder. She was slightly taller than him, but supporting him all the way to her car would still be no easy task. As soon as both hands were out from behind his back, he collapsed on the ground and yelled in pain. Pepper wasn't sure what to do.

"Bill...?" She asked.

"I'm fine," he struggled to talk. Pepper took his arm again and helped him stand on the leg that actually looked alright. Slowly, he hopped to her car, leaning on Pepper the whole way. Pepper couldn't help but wonder what he had been doing on the roof. And he was wearing the same clothing as two days before, but this time with shiny black shoes instead of socks. He'd seemed pretty normal at first, but now she wasn't so sure about him.

Pepper dumped him in the back seat of her car and let him lay down. He put his hands behind his back and sighed in relief, as if that brought him comfort. She started the car and zoomed out of the driveway, heading towards the hospital slightly above the speed limit. If she got a ticket for this she was making Bill pay for it.

"Thanks for doing this, Pep," Bill said. "I hope it's alright if I call you Pep. You look like more of a Pep than a Pepper to me."

"It's fine," Pepper said. She switched on the radio and a random song came on. She didn't know the name of the song or the artist, but it had a lot of acoustic guitar and she liked it.

"I have no idea how he wasn't screaming in pain before we gave him the medication," the nurse explained to Pepper. "He's got bruises and cuts all over, plus he further injured his already broken wrist. And there's this nasty burn on his back. Do you have any idea what happened to him? He refuses to tell anyone."

"Well, just today he fell off his roof," Pepper said. "But he's looked like this ever since he moved in two days ago. I'm sorry, I can't help you."

"That's too bad," the nurse said. "He's pretty young, too. I'm a little worried about him. If we let him out before he heals all the way he might re-injure himself."

"Nah, I'd keep a close eye on him," Pepper promised. "Can I see him?"

"He's a bit loopy from the medication, but yeah."

As soon as Pepper stepped into the room Bill was in, she knew something was wrong. He was just sitting on the hospital bed, foot elevated, frowning and staring at the wall. Even when he had been in the back of Pepper's car, he'd been faking a smile. In the few hours Pepper had known him she'd never seen him frown. It was weird. But as soon as he noticed her, the frown vanished.

"Pep! Heeey there," he said. He did sound quite loopy. "This pain medication really works, way better than magic. Man, I'm sleepy." He yawned. Pepper wondered what he meant by "magic". It was probably just the medication speaking for him.

"Hey, Pep, I know you just got here, but would you mind if I took a nap? I didn't get any sleep the past three days. Not even a minute of shut-eye," Bill said. Pepper was surprised but didn't react outwardly. Now that she thought about it, she could use some sleep as well. Stress was hard on her, and that afternoon was certainly stressful.

"I don't mind," she began. "Actually, I'm going to go home and take a nap myself. I'll come back and visit you later."

And with that, she left.


	2. Chapter 2

A week or two passed. Bill wasn't so sure—his perception of time wasn't exactly the best, even though he had several calendars and clocks stored away in the boxes he'd been too lazy to unpack. Instead he had been using the packages as chairs and tables when he needed them. But most of the time he just sat and slept on the floor.

He wished he could use his spare time to practice magic, but Pep had been keeping a pretty close eye on him ever since the hospital allowed him to leave. It was like she had eyes planted all over his house—maybe it was womanly instinct, but whenever he did something out of line, she seemed to know about it. So he kept his magical practices to a minimum and spent his time reading his parent's old geography books, instead. He especially took a liking to the pyramids. The way the sun shone off them and made them glimmer with golden yellow light, much like his eyes...eye.

He felt where his other eye used to be with his hand. He'd traded in the bandage for a black eye patch, and though it made him look wicked cool, he disliked feeling blind on one side. Maybe if he had time he could look for a spell to fix his eye. It was unlikely such magic existed, but he could hope.

Every day after Pep came home from her job at the Copy Shop, she would come over and talk to Bill for a few minutes or so. With the little bits of information he gathered about her every day, he found her to be quite a rare person. For one thing, she had red hair, but blue eyes to pair with it. He'd read somewhere once that was the rarest combination of hair and eye color in the world, so in a literal sense, that was one way she was rare. But her personality and eagerness to care for other people was also something that made her rare. Bill was pretty sure she'd never been a parent, but there was something a little motherly about her.

That day when Pep came to knock on the door, Bill was in an unusual position against the wall. He was laying down, but his legs were up resting on the wall in an awkward position. He held a geography book pretty close to his face and did nothing but look at the pictures. When he didn't answer the door, Pep let herself in.

"Bill? Are you here?" She called. Bill suddenly realized she'd never actually been inside his house.

"Yeah, I'm here," Bill called back. He continued looking at the pictures in the book, and it seemed to be getting closer and closer to his face with each page he turned.

Pep entered the room and sat down next to him with her back against the wall. She had a purse slung over her shoulder and a ring of keys was jingling in her hand. "You haven't unpacked yet?"

"I grab things as I need them," Bill said simply. He'd have thought she'd noticed that he hadn't unpacked by now, what with her watching him like a hawk and all. He finally flipped to the last page in the book and slammed it shut.

"You need to get out more," Pep said. "Do you even have any food around here?" She got up and headed towards the kitchen.

"Some," he said, moving to a sitting position awkwardly and grabbing his crutches from the ground. Pep carried a box of crackers and a can of tuna into the room.

"Yeah, 'some'," she said. "Do you have any money, Bill?"

"Yeah, I got a lot of money," Bill said. "Most of it's in the bank. But I inherited a lot from my parents. How do you think I could afford this house?"

Pep looked stunned for a second. "Okay, grab some cash. We're going shopping."

Bill wasn't very happy. Shopping wasn't his "thing". It might have been if his mom actually took him shopping as a child, but he hadn't grown up with it. So now he was in the front seat of Pep's car, frowning.

Bill wondered if Pep saw him as a friend or just a little kid that needed to be taken care of. Because of her attitude, he just assumed it'd be the latter. He wasn't that young. 17 was old enough to be living on his own. But he didn't even have a driver's license yet, and he was accident prone enough to need a parent or guardian to watch him.

"So, Bill, what's your favorite food?" Pep asked, on the car ride there.

"Dunno," Bill said. The rest of the ride was uncomfortably silent.

When they pulled into the supermarket parking lot, Pep got out first and handed Bill his crutches. They walked into the store, got a cart, and started shopping...with great difficulty. Bill wanted everything from every section and every shelf, while Pep was insistent on only buying what he really needed. In the end they bought a few luxuries, but mostly healthy foods. Bill paid for everything, of course, and even bought Pep some dark chocolate because she'd commented that she loved the stuff.

"Y'know Pep," Bill said, as they walked out of the store. "You're a rare person. Thanks."

"No problem," Pep said, but the way she said it, Bill knew he had been a problem for her. He wanted to make it up to her somehow, but any attempt at it would probably look pretty stupid from her point of view. He frowned again.

He'd make it up to this rare female somehow.


	3. Chapter 3

Bill was bored. _Extremely _bored. Pep had gone away for a week for some family reunion thing. It was still about three weeks before either of his casts came off, too. At least he didn't feel like eyes were on him all the time, any more. Maybe he could practice some magic.

He was in another awkward looking position, this time on top of the kitchen counter. He was on his stomach, and a book had been propped up in the kitchen sink. His feet rested against the fridge. It would have looked extremely uncomfortable to onlookers, but no one was there except for him, and it was comfortable to him, so that was all that really mattered.

He was getting bored of looking at images of pyramids. Maybe he'd be less bored if he could see them in person.

Getting out of the awkward position and leaving the open book in the sink, he walked up the stairs, to the landing with a window looking out into his yard. There was a box propped against the wall, unopened and not being used as furniture. It was filled with magic books. He knew a few basic spells by heart, like how to stop pain and hover a few inches—that was how he'd fallen off the roof, he'd been trying to hover more than a few inches and it hadn't worked so well.

Gosh, he hadn't looked at these magic books since before...well, since before his parents had taken them away. That hadn't stopped his practices though. Of course, that's what got them killed in the first place. But magic was an addicting thing. A little mistake like his parent's deaths wasn't going to stop him.

Bill took a deep breath and ripped open the box. It smelled a little musty. Grabbing the first book he could get his hands on, he tried not to rip it apart. It was baby-blue and felt a little damp, like it'd spent most of its time in a basement, which it probably had. When he opened it, the page almost crumbled in his hands—so he took extra care while turning the pages.

While looking at the contents, he noticed a healing spell. That could be useful.

_"Healing spells are more difficult than pain-relieving spells, but more rewarding. They require blue fire to be summoned, as they border on the line of dark magic. Use this spell with caution, as misuse could cause the injury to become worse rather than heal it."_

These words didn't intimidate Bill whatsoever. Blue fire? Easy. He found that the most fun to summon, as there were so many weird things you could do with it. Once he'd turned his mother's coffee into play-dough that still tasted like coffee. He wasn't sure if she'd ever figured it out, but coffee-flavored play-dough wasn't even the tip of the ice burg.

Bill summoned the blue fire in his good hand and then read further into the instructions. They seemed simple enough. He first tried it on his broken hand. The fire burned through his cast, so if it didn't work, he'd have nothing to hold his bones together with. But thankfully the healing spell worked. A little too well, he thought, flexing his wrist. It felt better than ever.

Next was his leg, a harder task considering how badly he'd broken it, and the fact that it was bigger than his wrist. This time he summoned blue fire in _both _hands—and good for him, after the cast had burned off, the healing spell worked. He could now stand, walk, and lift heavy things with ease. Now what about the burn on his back? He couldn't control the blue fire if it set something other than his hand ablaze. Hmm. It wasn't bothering him that much anyway.

Bill flipped back to the contents page and scrolled through interesting-looking spells. Exploding potatoes...trees that grew buckets of green glop...living skulls you could have conversations with...did Bill even own a human skull? He though there was a cow skull in a box somewhere. Maybe he could enchant that.

No matter. What mattered was that he was bored and there was no immediate solution to his boredom. Maybe...no. That couldn't work. A healing spell _that_ powerful? The amount of energy it would take would drive him insane. Then again...insanity might be worth it.

He flipped through the pages to the back, where it had a little section on using power.

_"Magic should never be used at maximum power unless absolutely necessary. But when using magic at full power, spells can do impossible things, such as heal missing body parts, travel in time, manipulate reality, and tell the future. But avoid doing these things at all costs. There are dangerous consequences."_

Bill ignored the first and last parts and focused on the middle. Insane he might become, but having his sight back was worth it. Or so he hoped.

The blonde haired wizard ripped his eye patch off, revealing a burned, sickening hole where his eye should have been. He then summoned blue fire in both his hands and clamped them over his eyes. The contact stung, burned...but he could feel it working. The magic running through his veins. He focused all his power, every last bit he could muster, and suddenly felt amazing, happy..._terrified_? There was so much power, his head felt like it could explode. But not in a way that would be painful, or bring death. In a way that would heal anything bad that had ever happened, and would make everyone on earth happy. It was gosh darn scary.

Before Bill had a chance to register anything, the whole world went black.


End file.
